Your best solution for creating animated GIFs is the professional version of Photoshop, which includes a timeline for doing exactly what you want to do.

The bad news is that it's pretty pricey. The good news is that this feature has been available for over 10 years, so if you can find even a pre-CS version of Photoshop (Photoshop 5, for instance) used on Amazon or eBay, it will do what you need without costing you much.

For #2, Adobe After Effects would be ideal, as it has many features and Extensions, that will automate the animation over time, and from point A to point B.

Neither option, will be cheap, but as Steve points out, there might be some "deals" out there, since the Adobe CS suites are going away, to be replaced by the Creative Cloud (CC) licensing scheme.

Also, there might be less expensive options with non-Adobe programs. However, as I have the CS 6 Production Premium, I really have not explored any of those. Others might have some useful recommendations for those.